Each year Lama Zopa Rinpoche receives about 1,500 letters and emails. In his replies to these letters, Rinpoche may offer essential advice, thanks and, if requested, life practices. Here is one letter Rinpoche sent in 2014, thanking a student who had worked for many years at a number of FPMT centers:

My most dear, most kind, most precious wish-fulfilling xxxx,

Thank you billion times for your great support and service since you came to the center in 2007 and for the retreats you did — the Vajrasattva retreat and working at center — thank you billions of times. So this is working for all the sentient beings to educate them, to wake them up from ignorance, to enlighten them. Then by thinking of me as guru — then if working for center, then you collect the most extensive merit, most extensive and greatest purification every day, every hour, every minute and every second. Then also offering to numberless Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, statues, stupas and scriptures.

Sakya Pandita mentioned that thousands of eons of having practiced the paramita of charity — giving away one’s heads, legs and hands to the sentient beings for thousands of eons — all the merit collected like this is achieved in one second by the gurus path.

So that means when you work for the guru — following the gurus advice or fulfilling the gurus wishes — all that merit that has been collected for thousands of eons by making charity, in one second it gets done. So you have to understand this.

So please rejoice your whole life, unbelievable, most unbelievably happy, happy in Dharma, not happy with attachment and anger — this is totally different. It is happy to achieve enlightenment to benefit sentient beings. So like that there is no time for depression, day and night, even when you are sick … happy!

So please find attached — this is whole life time of practice, so you can die unbelievably in a most happy way, no worry. In this way nobody has to help you. You are guided by yourself and you are the happiest person in the world.

If we want to understand how we are ordinarily misled by our false projections and how we break free from their influence, it is helpful to think of the analogy of our dream experiences. When we wake up in the morning, where are all the people we were just dreaming about? Where did they come from? And where did they go? Are they real or not?